In recent years people have become more and more dependent on communication devices at work and at home. Because of the importance of staying in contact, missed calls can be frustrating and costly. Business people want to stay in constant contact with clients and personal associates. To keep up with the demands of constant availability, business people have either been carrying two mobile phones or giving out their personal phone number so that clients can reach them at all hours.
If an employee uses a private phone for business purposes, problems may arise, such as, who will pay the phone bill. Even if the employee gets his employer to pay for business calls made on a personal phone, discrepancies may arise when trying to figure out which charges are personal and which charges are business related. Also, if an employee uses his personal mobile phone for work calls, the recipient of the call may not take the call because the recipient may not recognize the calling line identification of the employee's personal phone. Further, although a company may reimburse an employee for phone use, the company may not want to pay for certain calls. Indeed, a company may restrict an employee's phone use. For example, an employer may not pay for long distance calls. When an employee uses his personal mobile phone for business purposes, the employee's use is unrestricted. Thus, either the company may get stuck with charges the company normally would not allow, or the employee may get stuck paying for a business call that he did not know he should not make.
An employee may want to avoid carrying multiple phones to meet business and personal needs. Even though an employer may agree to reimburse charges for business calls made on a personal phone, the employer may want to restrict the types of calls that an employee makes. Also, an employee may want to make and receive business calls using his personal mobile phone as if he was using his business phone. The employee may not want to worry about separating charges for business and personal calls. Further, the employee may want services available on his business phone to also be available on his personal phone. For example, the employee may want to know when he receives voicemail messages at his business phone by having a message waiting indicator light up on his personal phone. Or, the employee may want to receive, on his personal phone, text messages that are sent to his business phone. On the other hand, the employee may want to control hours that business calls come into his personal phone. For example, the employee may not want to receive business calls on his personal phone after 8:00 pm. Or, the employee may not want to receive business calls on Sunday.